


Exams, Stress, and Library Tutoring Sessions

by xXKris_WritesXx



Series: College AU Drarry [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chemistry, Drarry, Exams, If you've taken chemistry you'll probably understand some of what happens, M/M, Stress, Tutoring, draco being a smartass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 13:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18740107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXKris_WritesXx/pseuds/xXKris_WritesXx
Summary: Harry Potter is stressing over his chemistry midterm and doesn’t understand anything. Fortunately for him, Draco is there to help.





	Exams, Stress, and Library Tutoring Sessions

Exams were coming up and Harry had never felt more stressed on his midterms. He had never been very good at school, but he had managed to breeze through it all these years with minimal studying, which was what he had planned to do once again this year. That is, until the professor had revealed the very topic the midterm was focusing on.

“This is why you should’ve been studying, Harry!” Hermione said, when he expressed his frustrations with the topic. “You know chemistry isn’t your best subject, especially when it comes to nomenclature and balancing chemical equations!”

“It’s fine, Hermione. A few bad grades isn’t the end of the world,” replied Ron, who, Harry thought, should’ve probably been studying as well, seeing as how his grades were even worse than Harry’s.

Hermione decided to ignore Ron. “I’m serious, Harry. You don’t want bad grades, and if you don’t start studying for chem now, you’re going to have to resort to asking the one person who actually understands it!”

“I am _not_ asking Malfoy, Hermione,” replied Harry, who shuddered at the thought of being tutored by Malfoy alone. 

“Then you’re just going to have to study by yourself,” replied Hermione, who brought out a physics textbook and began rifling through it.

Harry sighed. If only Hermione had chosen to take chemistry with him instead of physics. He wouldn’t be in this predicament right now if she had. He knew it was wrong of him to think that way, but he couldn’t help it.

He quickly went back to eating his breakfast before she could lecture him further.

-  
“I don’t understand a thing!” moaned Harry, rifling through his chemistry textbook. He had been in the library for an hour, reviewing his notes and flashcards, and had understood nothing.

Flashcards and additional pieces of paper were scattered all around the table. Harry had given up on trying to put them in a neat, categorized pile. It seemed that whenever he organized his notes, the whole table would be messy again in less than a minute. 

Harry crossed his arms on the table and laid his head down. 

_‘That’s it. I’m just going to fail this test and not graduate. Then I won’t get a decent job and won’t make any money and die all alo-‘_

The floor creaked behind him. Then came a voice.

“You are a mess today, Potter.”

Harry groaned and looked up into the eyes of Draco Malfoy. 

“Go away, Malfoy,” he said. Couldn’t Draco tell that he was in the middle of feeling depressed?

Draco ignored him and glanced at his table, picking up one of Harry’s papers. “ _Chemistry?,_ That’s what you’re stressing over? Chemistry’s easy!”

“Maybe for you it is,” Harry responded, trying to snatch the paper out of Draco’s hand. 

He couldn’t reach it, of course. Over the course of summer, Harry had grown an inch and was happy about it until he had gone back to school. Draco, it seems, had grown two or three inches, finally towering over Harry, who was used to being taller than Draco.

“Seriously, have you not learned to balance chemical equations properly?” Draco was saying, skimming over Harry’s worksheet. 

Harry ignored him and turned back to the mess in front of him. He found a worksheet from the pile that he had finished halfway and decided to finish it in order to practice. 

A few minutes later, he was still on the same problem. 

It wouldn’t have bugged Harry so much, but Draco was still standing beside Harry, watching him do the worksheet. 

He waited for a taunt or an insult from Draco. 

Instead, all that came out was a sigh. 

Draco took a seat next to Harry, setting down the worksheet he had stolen and began to look at the problem Harry was doing. “You are absolutely hopeless with this.”

He quickly borrowed a pencil from Harry and tugged the paper toward him, filling in the problem. 

Finger on the different reactants and products, he began explaining. “You only change the coefficients of the equation, not the subscripts.”

As Draco talked, Harry found himself actually listening for once. Draco was good at explaining things, maybe even more so than Hermione, and Harry found himself actually being able to solve the simpler problems on the page in no time (The harder ones were still a problem for him). 

As Harry was completing an equation, he looked up at Draco. “Why did you decide to help me?”

Draco scoffed. “What, no thank you, Potter? Where are your manners? I only decided to help you because you looked absolutely pathetic, failing to solve even the simplest of problems.”

Harry looked back down at his worksheet. “Thank you,” he muttered in the smallest voice possible. 

“What was that?”

“I said _thank you!_ ” 

Draco smirked. “So you do have manners after all.”

Harry decided to ignore him, and focused back on the worksheet.

In time, Harry began to understand other problems on the paper and began to complete them, with Draco ~~insulting~~ helping him from time to time. 

(And although they would still continue to argue in their classes and at school, Harry would go to the library to study from time to time, and Draco, despite his taunts, would always come over and help him.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this fic! If you've taken chemistry before, hopefully you understood some of what Draco was trying to help Harry with lol
> 
> Feel free to leave kudos and comments!!


End file.
